Thursday, January 14, 2016

The central Diyala city of Muqtadiya has been embroiled in
several days of violence after an Islamic State double bombing. The militants
set off two bombs that left over 100 casualties. Afterward Hashd al-Shaabi
elements carried out a series of retaliatory attacks against shops, homes,
mosques, civilians, and told Sunnis they needed to leave the city. The security
forces have done nothing, and the Iraqi press and government have been almost
silent on the matter due to the politics in the province.

The crisis in Muqtadiya began with bombings by the Islamic
State. On January
11, an improvised explosive device went off at a coffee
shop in a Shiite neighborhood that served many members of the Hashd
al-Shaabi. After a crowd gathered a car bomb detonated. Together the two
explosions left
behind 46 dead and 55 wounded, many of which were said to be with the
Hashd. The Islamic State has been turning to these types of terrorist attacks
in the last few months as it has gone on the defensive. For example, three
weeks before the group set off two
car bombs in Diyala’s Khalis. The goal of these operations is to set off
sectarian tensions and that was exactly what happened.

In the aftermath of the bombings elements of the Hashd
carried out revenge attacks throughout the city. On the first day six
mosques, seven houses and 36 shops were destroyed, while 10
Sunni men were killed. There were two reports that the Hashd were telling Sunnis
to leave the city or be killed. This was all happening during a curfew imposed
by the security forces in the wake of the IS bombings, which was lifted the
next day. On January 12 another building was blown up,
and two journalists from the Sharqiya television station were killed
in Abu Saida, which was blamed on the Hashd. Some believed that was a warning
to the media to not report on what was going on in Muqtadiya. By January 13,
another Sunni mosque
was destroyed and five more people were killed.
Besides all the carnage what was remarkable was that there was hardly any
coverage in the Iraqi media about what was going on, and Baghdad made no
statements. The United Nations represented to Iraq condemned
the violence, and Speaker of Parliament Salim al-Jabouri, who is from Diyala, cut short a trip to
Lebanon to meet with provincial officials, but the prime minister’s office has
still been silent and there are still hardly any stories about it. The security
forces appear to be completely absent from the scene as well.

The Islamic State has been hoping for just such a
conflagration to break out in Iraq. It constantly bombs Shiite targets hoping
for retaliatory attacks to occur. The killing and wounding of a large number of
Hashd in Muqtadiya was just the target they had been seeking as it set off the
fighters. The Hashd have been known to attack Sunni civilian targets before.
The fact that there was a near total blackout about the violence in the city
also highlighted the special situation in Diyala. Badr’s Hadi Ameri has run
both the politics and security in the province since 2014. His power and
position is probably why few if any Iraqi media outlets reported on events, and
also why the security forces have done nothing to stop the violence. Until
Ameri gets involved this crisis is likely to continue.

UPDATE

Yesterday Speaker Jabouri and today Prime Minister Abadi went to the operations command in Diyala to talk about the situation in Muqtadiya. NINA reported that January 13 the security forces were sent into the city to try to restore order. Abadi said that he wanted them to crackdown on any perpetrators. Parliament's security committee is going to set up an investigatory commission to look into the violence. It looks like the crisis has finally passed, but it took the authorities 2-3 days to finally respond after most of the damage was done.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com